Ultraconservative to head Iran’s top clerical body

Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the clerics who appoint and can dismiss the country’s supreme leader, have picked an ultraconservative as their new chairman in a surprise move. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, 83, was a deputy speaker of parliament after the 1979 Islamic revolution and headed the judiciary for a decade until 1999. He gained 47 of the 73 votes cast at a closed-door meeting in Tehran, according to the website of state television, citing officials.

Psychologically, I am not at all prepared to become the chairman of the Assembly of Experts. We’ll see on the day. My criterion is that it should be someone who befits the stature of the Assembly of Experts.

Former assembly president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in an interview published by the reformist Shargh newspaper, explaining why he hoped he wouldn’t win

Yazdi was among five contenders whose names had been linked to the post by Iranian media in recent weeks but he was not the most talked about. Yazdi, described in Iran’s official Who’s Who as rightwing, takes up a position vacant since October 2014, when Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani died following a heart attack.

Middle East